Monday, February 06, 2006

Oxygen is the only gas that will pick up and hold electrical energy. In doing so, it becomes tremendously active and seeks to combine with all other substances. The list of substances that are inert to ozone is very short, and includes glass, Teflon, Kynar, silicone and gold. Therefore, any ozone generator and auxilliary equipment must be composed of these substances only. There are several different techniques used to produce medical grade ozone, where freedom from contamination is critical.

One type of generator uses an ultraviolet lamp as its source. It produces a very small amount of ozone in a narrow frequency bandwidth of ultraviolet light. Outside of that bandwidth, UV destroys ozone. A UV lamp is unreliable because it is subject to degradation over time, causing uncertainty regarding concentration, and eventually it burns out.

The second method of ozone production is corona discharge, where a tube with a hot cathode is surrounded by a screen anode. The best ones are called dual-dielectric, because they have a layer of glass separating each component from the gas stream. This prevents contamination of the ozone in the best designs, but heat is produced, and heat destroys ozone. To compensate for the loss in concentration, more electricity is used, resulting in more heat, and consequent electrical failure. This produces generators that have short lives.

Lack of durability has always beset the ozone generator industry, and was one of the major reasons for naturopaths mostly abandoning ozone therapy during the Thirties. I have spoken to doctors who have used ozone for three decades and have gone through a half dozen generators in that time, due to the lack of a durable generator, and reliable servicing.

Fortunately, there is a third method of producing clean, medical grade ozone. That method is called cold plasma. It uses two glass rods filled with a noble gas, electrostatic plasm field which turns the oxygen into ozone. Since there is no appreciable current, no heat is produced. Thus the generator will last a very long time, limited only by the quality of the power supply. The original cold plasma ozone generators were invented by Nikola Tesla in the 1920s, and they still work 75 years later.